Arts & Entertainment
Mitchell S. Jackson:
You Can Do Anything in
Fiction
Bruce Poinsette
Of The Skanner News
Painting Show
stone in his career, he discusses his new
book and the journey that got him to this
point.
Prologue
“The Residue Years”
itchell S. Jackson wants you to focus
on his craft. So much so that he tells
readers how the story is going to end before
the first chapter in his debut novel “The
Residue Years.”
“That’s why I put the prologue at the
beginning of the book saying this guy is
going to go to prison,” says the author. “I’m
taking that away from you right from the
jump so now what’s your reason for read-
ing?”
Jackson’s evolution has taken him from
dreams of being a news anchor to writing
for national publications to teaching writing
in New York. As he awaits another mile-
“The Residue Years” is a work of fiction
but it’s also autobiographical. It switches
perspectives between a young man named
Champ and his drug addicted mother,
Grace. Fresh out of rehab, Grace is trying to
stay clean and get her kids back while
Champ tries to reclaim the home their fam-
ily once shared. Faced with few options, he
gets caught up in the world of selling crack.
Jackson, who served 16 months for drug
dealing (and says he very well could’ve
served more), knows that the content is
“familiar” so he focuses on literary tech-
niques to make it fresh.
The goal is that his story won’t be mar-
ginalized as just another “story about a
Black guy by this Black guy about being
Black.”
Writing the novel has been an uphill
struggle.
“The Residue Years” was a story he want-
ed to tell since before he became he a writer.
After eight years of writing, he took the
book to his mentor who suggested he scrap
the idea.
“To be honest, it wasn’t a novel when I
gave it to him,” says Jackson. “It was some
episodes. It was some chapters but it didn’t
have the narrative thrust a good novel
should have.”
In his mentor’s class, students were
instructed to do one of two things when this
happens. Either start over or keep working
until it becomes the piece you want it to be.
He chose the latter and used the rejection as
motivation.
The rewriting process took many drafts.
Jackson says he did three or four alone for
Bloomsbury, his publisher, within the last
year and a half.
“It took so long for me to do it and there
were moments where I didn’t feel so
strong—that I would be able to make it,” he
says. “It’s not that I didn’t feel I would be
able to finish. I was determined to finish but
I wanted to make sure it was something I’d
be proud of.”
M
DOCUMENTARY
Jackson has been at work on an accom-
panying documentary for “The Residue
Years.”
“I always used to watch behind the
scenes of an album—the making of
Nelly’s first album or something and I
was always intrigued,” he says. “And I
was thinking to myself, no one had real-
ly done that for a novel.”
The author’s documentary will focus on
the process of making the novel as well
as the content the story is based on.
Specifically, it will discuss Portland in
the 80s and 90s.
Topics include gentrification, gang prolif-
eration and what basketball means to
the city. These were things that were
important to Jackson when he was
growing up.
Interview subjects include Freeway
Ricky Ross, the judge that sentenced
Jackson, local basketball legend Den-
mark Reid and Jefferson basketball
coach Pat Strickland.
The documentary also features Jackson
speaking at a prison.
In many ways, the release of the novel
and the documentary represent his life
coming full circle and yet, in his travels
back to Portland, he’s seen his old
stomping grounds distance itself from
that past.
On one occasion, he was at a Whole
Foods in Northeast Portland and says
he didn’t see a single Black person.
“The thing about that that seemed inter-
esting to me was that it was almost like
Black people had never been there,”
says Jackson. “Like there wasn’t any
residue of the displacement. It was like,
‘This is how it’s always been. Life is
good. Get some tofu lasagna.’”
The Rosemont Court Art Show
and Sale is Sunday, Aug. 25,
1-5 p.m., at 597 N Dekum
St,.m in Portland. Many origi-
nal works by participating
artists are African themed,
including the works of Veroh,
(Veroniccah Muwonge) a
passionate painter and visu-
al artist. “Throughout my
work, I seek to share with the
world my internal subjective
day to day experiences of
life, the African culture and
that of the people I meet.”
A winner of 2005 Ford Foun-
dation Fellowship for African
and Arab Artists, her work has
been exhibited in Uganda,
Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia,
South Africa, Nigeria, France,
Germany, New York, Califor-
nia, and Portland.
More on her work at
www.veroh.com.
PSU, Jackson moved to New York where he
got his M.F.A. from New York University.
As a newcomer, he would go to parties
and introduce himself to magazine person-
alities he recognized. This got his foot in the
door with publications like King Magazine,
Vibe and The Source.
Jackson didn’t take the traditional route of
Evolution as a Writer
“The Residue Years” is the culmination of
nearly a decade of writing and Jackson has
been busy broadening his craft in other
fields throughout the process.
After graduating from Portland State Uni-
versity he took an internship at KOIN and
then worked as an associate producer
at KATU. His goal was to become a
news anchor.
During that time, he became disillu-
sioned. Jackson didn’t want to
compromise his identity and decided
to go to grad school at PSU.
Although he liked journalism, he
was more beholden to long form fea-
ture writing. One of his first published
pieces, which appeared in the Portland Trib-
une, was called “Almost Famous.” It told
the story of his basketball playing peers
who didn’t make it to the pros.
After getting his Master’s in writing from
pitching a story and querying an editor.
Grounded in Fiction
Versatility is the key to a career in writing,
he says.
“My favorite writer is James Baldwin,”
says Jackson. “My favorite living writer is
somewhere between John Edgar Wideman
and Junot Diaz and all those guys do fiction
and nonfiction. I feel like if you can’t do
nonfiction, you might be kind of weak as a
writer.”
With his broad base of writing work, fic-
tion is still Jackson’s ground base. You can
do anything with fiction, he says.
“If you were never good at letter writing,
you could write a novel in letters. It gives
you the skill set to be strong in the other
areas. Storytelling and creating a scene and
description, I’ve always thought the
strength of those comes from being able to
write fiction.”
With the release of his debut novel, Jack-
son hopes to put that on full display to the
literary world.
It was an apprenticeship when he first
started, he says. He would read other
authors and pick and choose techniques he
liked until he finally settled on first person
narrative, his strongest voice.
The finished product incorporates tools
like meta-fiction, or stepping outside of the
narrative to speak to the reader, all while
switching back and forth between perspec-
tives.
Jackson is perhaps, most proud of
his use of language.
“One thing that I really, really work
hard at is sentence making,” he says.
“All the writers that I like, they’re
about creating beautiful sentences.
Not beautiful in the sense that I’m
talking about butterflies and all that
but just interesting, sonically appeal-
ing sentences.”
“The Residue Years” will be in stores
Aug. 20. Jackson will be reading from the
novel at Powell’s City of Books on Burn-
side on Sep. 13 at 7:30 p.m.
Acclaimed author discusses
debut novel and his evolution
throughout the writing process
Instead, he focused on meeting people and
building relationships.
In addition to feature journalism, Jackson
did fiction and poetry, which has won
awards and appeared in literary journals.
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Page 6 The Portland Skanner August 21, 2013
Now he teaches writing at NYU, Medgar
Evers College and John Jay College.